Issa Rae Doesn’t Mind That Emmys Snub: “That Just Motivates Me More”

The second season of Insecure, debuting on HBO July 23, looks lush—more cinematic in scope and more ensconced in the rich tones of Los Angeles. The comedy is leveling up after a successful first season, which saw creator Issa Rae become a prestige-network-anointed star and Golden Globe nominee. New viewers got in formation behind her original, been-there-since-the-Web-series fans, pulled in by the show’s warm and funny first season about an awkward black girl, her best friend, and her new single status after a painful breakup.

But a sophomore effort is always considered more difficult, as the artist must prove their initial success wasn’t a fluke. Rae doesn’t consider her show a hit yet—she won’t indulge that kind of hagiography until its final episode, when she can look back and measure its cultural influence.

“Will it go down as a Sex and the City, where you’re constantly referencing it and everybody knows what you’re talking about? Or Friends?” she tells Vanity Fair. “I want to be a pop-cultural staple.”

Then she doubles down: “I want this show to be a pop-cultural staple.”

Insecure’s second season was originally scheduled as 10 episodes debuting in the fall, but HBO suggested pushing production up so that it could get two valuable Sunday night lead-ins, Game of Thrones and Ballers. “We said no at first,” Rae says, noting the tight turnaround. But HBO was persuasive. Rae sacrificed two episodes in order to put the now-eight-episode season together, which she ultimately loved: “It just feels like there’s no fat.”

Season 2 picks up where we left Issa and Molly (Yvonne Orji). After cheating on her longtime boyfriend, Lawrence (Jay Ellis), Issa is now feeling her way in the dark without him. She’s leaning into her friendships more and rolling her eyes through dating apps. In the first episode, she shows up to one date wearing a blasé sweater with the word “niggas” casually stitched on the front. (In real life, the sweater belongs to executive producer Melina Matsoukas.)

Molly, meanwhile, is seeing a therapist for the first time, working through her problems at her own headstrong pace. “She opens up about the wrong things, we’ll see,” Rae says.

The picture-perfect lawyer is also facing some surprising new challenges at work, dealing directly with a wage-gap issue. “We wanted to take that security blanket away from Molly and realize, yeah, you’re killing it at work, but you’re not being valued equally as one of your white counterparts.”

The idea came about after lengthy conversations in the writers’ room, with Rae digging into her own experiences as a writer and actor. “I just didn’t know to negotiate,” she recalls of her early career days. “I just thought, O.K., this is what I’m supposed to be paid. Especially when you’re younger, you’re in some cases grateful to have a job. The idea of you speaking up about money is already uncomfortable . . . I didn’t know my worth.”

This season also includes a guest appearance from Sterling K. Brown, the star of The People v. O.J. Simpson and now This Is Us, who told Rae he was a fan of the show during an awards-season event and asked to appear on it one day. “That’s what everybody says,” Rae remembers thinking.

But let it be known that Sterling K. Brown is a man of his word. “He slid in my DMs and was like, ‘But when you gon’ cast me?’” Rae recalls. “I was like, ‘We have a perfect part for you!’”

These days, Rae is having the kind of success she originally dreamed of. Earlier this year, she was nominated for a Golden Globe, a signifier that she would be a serious contender at the Emmys a few months down the line. But to the surprise of her fans, neither Rae nor the show got the attention of Emmy voters. Vocal critics considered it a majorsnub, while fans griped about the lack of nods on Twitter.

“It would have been amazing to get an Emmy nomination . . . but that just motivates me more,” Rae says. “We’re gonna get on the radar.”

Aside from the wave of Twitter love, the lack of nods also led to a warm text from director Ava DuVernay, who also didn’t earn any nods for her excellent OWN series Queen Sugar.

“It was funny, because I was just thinking about her . . . I remember when Ava and Selma got snubbed for the Oscars—and then like 10 minutes later she was like, ‘Hey sis,’ and screenshotted me a couple tweets that she had seen on Twitter and was just like, ‘I’m thinking of you,’” she recalls. “That was just the nicest thing.”

This, of course, isn’t the first time DuVernay has texted Rae. This past May, a viral tweet inspired fans to dream up a heist movie starring Lupita Nyong’o and Rihanna, directed by DuVernay and written by Rae. Netflix apparently made a move to nab the rights. In a recent interview, DuVernay clarified that the movie’s status is still unofficial, but that the four of them have a group text going.

“I defer to Ava,” Rae, ever the artful dodger, says. “I saw her say that it’s not official, and she also said that we’re on a text chain together . . . if that’s what she says, it’s true.”

Alas, that’s about all she can say, despite our best efforts to figure out who started the chain and what Rihanna’s emoji game is like.

When asked how her life has changed the most in the wake of newfound fame, Rae doesn’t point to the Sterling DMs or text chains with superstars. She points back to the show, noting that ever since it started, she—along with Matsoukas and show-runner Prentice Penny—has been able to give a leg-up to young people of color who otherwise haven’t been able to break into TV by hiring them. This isn’t only vital for making the industry more inclusive—it also just makes Insecure a better show.

“Sometimes it is more valuable when people have just an inherent knowledge of what the fuck we’re talking about,“ she says. “Where you don’t have to explain what a Jheri curl is, where you don’t have to explain what an A.K.A. is . . . when people are familiar with the work, they tend to do great work.”